How Your Business Stands Out In The Crowded World

How is your business different? For most, the answers are their excellent customer service, their product, their passion that they bring to the table. Now I am sure you do deliver but so does most other businesses.

As a consumer, I can get about the same level of service, product, and price just about anywhere so as a business, how do I stand out? The first thing you need to put into your mind is this.

Everything is a commodity

It is a hard pill to swallow, but it’s true. There is good news though! You can persevere through the power of branding! Entreprenuer.com has a great definition of what branding is, and it goes as follows:

The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets.

An effective brand takes your business up a notch. When you become omnipresent with your brand, you win…period. When you are the first thing someone thinks about when he or she see something along the lines of what you do, you will find plenty of success.

So how do you start to brand yourself?

This question is the opening of a very long training. One we will have I assure you, but this blog post is not the in-depth training. I am going to go over some basic strategies to start building your brand though! The goal of this post is to get you to realize that we may not be able to stand out on our own but we can through branding.

Remember, without branding; we are just like everyone else.

Start With Why

You are why is the most powerful part of you and your business. Every great business or leader has an origin story that showcases theirs why. The more you show you are why with what you do and with your audience, the more buy-in you will get from everyone.

In the words of Simon Sinek, “People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” If you have been living under a rock and haven’t seen his Ted Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, I have embedded it below for you. It is still a great watch if you have seen it already!

Logo

Here’s our logo! Simple, easy to recognize, and easy to draw by most people. Pretty straightforward here but many businesses, especially just starting out, don’t understand the importance of getting a logo. Every business should have a logo. It is the face of your company and the first thing consumers associate with your business. Unless you are the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, make a logo a priority.

Develop a Mission Statement

It is crazy to think about how many businesses do not have something as simple as a mission statement! A mission defines what the business does for its customer’s and its employees.

Ensure your mission statement is not generic though. That can be just as bad as not having one. Instead, create a mission statement that almost sounds like an overall business strategy.

Be Consistent

The overall for this section is to be consistent with your voice. I do not mean voice by just you speaking, but voice as in everything you do that represents your business. This can be through ad copy, social media posts, blogs, the design on your website, uniforms, etc.

Being consistent helps your audience quickly identify and follow your brand.

Summary

It is not a hard concept but can be a difficult task with the planning, time, and money needed to complete it. Remember, just having a business with excellent service is not enough. You have to develop your brand and start hustling with making sure everyone knows what that is.